Alone in the Garden

March/April 2009 Project: In the Garden From Cafe Writing

Option Two:Fiction

It is good to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presences may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought.
~James Douglas, from Down Shoe Lane

Using the above quotation as your inspiration, write a flash-fic, scene, or short story involving being alone in a garden.

I closed my eyes and inhaled the cold, wet smell of dew beginning to condense on the vegetation around me. I could feel the subtle, shifting minutes sliding by, each one creeping closer to dawn, and I knew I wouldn't have too much time to be alone with my thoughts. But alone was what I desperately needed to be. At least for now.

I climbed into a large magnolia tree towards the centre of the garden and laid back against its old and comforting trunk, letting the slight breeze through its leaves wash the scents of rose, lavender, narcissus, gardenia, and lilac over me from the multicolour carpet below. It was a perfect scene of tranquillity, a veritable Eden here amongst the hustle and bustle of the city, and yet even here, within the safe walls of the garden, I was still being haunted by my thoughts and memories.

My mother would have loved this garden, I thought. She had a greater appreciation for life than anyone I had ever known, and not just because of her special talent. No, she loved life and all things living, and being surrounded by such overgrown vivacity would have set her soul aglow. But naturally I can't think about mother without thinking of what had happened to her. There's always that small part of me, the everlasting hope of a child, that she's alive and well, and the equally sensible rational of an adult that knows she's not. Even here, in this picturesque garden, bathed in the purity of clean moonlight, I can see the events of that dark night of carnage. The sudden shock of surprise, the screams of instant realisation, and the frustrating fear of paralysis. Then the blood. The endless rivers of blood as heads were severed, bodies dismembered, stabbed, cut, poison leeching out of them onto the intricate mosaic. The mounds of debilitated bodies rising to the size of hills, the sound of sizzling fat and liquid spitting out onto the hot, glowing embers, the suffocating thick smoke that arose from the pyres, the sun vanishing behind a greasy smoke. The crosses in the distance and the cheers of victory emanating from the clergy. It wasn't just genocide, it was the elimination of a species. My species.

I took another big breath in an attempt to clear my head of the horrific images, sounds, and smells, but try as I might to replace fetid with flowery, those ghosts of the past refused to depart.

“Dee”

“Ah!” I shrieked in fright, nearly falling out of the tree. “Oh Jesus, Mike, you gotta give me some warning before you just appear like that.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled ashamedly, “I know you wanted to be left alone, but it's almost sunrise and I'm headed off to bed.”

“Oh of course, honey, just give me a sec and I'll be in to say goodnight. Or I guess I'd be good morning.” Michael gave me a smile and then went back to the house as quietly as he had come. I stood up on the branch to stretch and heard the sound of fire engines off in the far distance. I turned my head towards the noise and guessed what I'd be seeing on the morning news. Another church was burning.

Adventures in Baking

I scribbled this one out in a very very boring class on Research and Methodologies. Completely useless. But I had to look attentive and as if I were talking notes. This was the result.

Mandy Stockwell was out of butter. ‘Drat,’ she thought, staring into the fridge at the empty butter tray. She went through to the living room to grab her handbag and head into town. Her sister’s birthday was today, and Mandy had agreed to make the cake. ‘Drat,’ she thought again as she opened her handbag and stared down into her empty purse, forgetting that she has spent all but 17p the other day on cake ingredients –minus the butter. There was no going around it, Mandy would have to go to the bank and then to the shop.

Mandy walked the mile and a half into town. It was a pleasant Autumn early afternoon, and the changing leaves in the trees made Mandy smile, while the crisp air cleared her mind, making her secretly grateful for the excuse of going into town on such a lovely day.
She rounded the corner into town and trotted up to the cash machine. Unfortunately the cash machine was out of order, and she was forced to queue up with everyone else inside. It was precisely seven minutes later, when Mandy was second in line from the front of the queue, that the gentleman directly behind her pulled out a gun, grabbed her arm, and announced to the bank that Mandy would die if they failed to empty their vaults.

The bank went deadly silent. However, before anyone could move a muscle in reaction, Mandy released an absolutely massive fart. She couldn’t help it, she was absolutely terrified. Ever since she was three years old and Greg Thompson had snuck up behind her, pulled her pig tails, scared her out of her wits and scarred her for life, Mandy had always farted when startled or scared. It had become a natural, responsive function, like blinking and tearing when you get poked in the eye. And now, seeing as how Many was absolutely petrified with fear, the farts kept popping and squelching out of her, one after the other with various levels of intensity.

These farts in particular also happened to be incredibly smelly in addition to incredibly loud, due to the fact that Mandy had eaten a curry for tea the previous night and had tucked into an egg salad sandwich for lunch, causing a noxious odour to permeate the air in a 10 foot radius around Mandy . The gunman, who was the closest to Many, and thus the most saturated in her bowel musk, stared at her with a look of shock and horror, frozen in a moment of stunned disbelief. ‘Oh my god,’ mumbled Mandy, ‘I am so sorry, I, I,I-,’ but was cut off by another explosive fart before she could finish her sentence. The gunman, overcome by the fetid stench emanating from Mandy’s rear, backed a few feet away and waved his gun-hand back and forth in front of his face in a useless attempt to escape the putrid odours.

It was at that exact moment that the gunman left himself open and vulnerable. Immediately he was tackled from behind by Mr. Greenblatt, the gentleman who had previous occupied the first place in the queue and who coincidentally held a rugby record back at college for his exceeding talent of tackling and inducing pain on the opposition. He quickly threw the gunman to the floor and kept him still in a one-armed, broke-back, nut-crunch, a move that had made him famous on the pitch.

Due to Mr. Greenblatt’s skill in violent sports, the gunman was quickly subdued, the police came, and everyone was taken down to the station to give their statements. By the time Mandy left the police station, it was almost 6:00 and the bank was closed. ‘Damn,’ Mandy thought as she trudged home empty handed, ‘I never got the butter!’

A Bright Morning

Option Four:Fiction - from Writing Cafe

Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies.
~Erich Fromm

Using the above quotation as your inspiration, write a flash-fic, scene, or short story involving a bright morning.

Henry Stealman looked down at the Erich Fromm quote printed in a fancy swirling scrip on his paper napkin, let out an annoyed half snort, and wiped off a bit of foam from his morning latte, his lips staining the paper with a muddy blotch. One happy moment equivalent to the suffering of life? Ha, he thought, getting up and making his way to the door of the Wedgewood Cafe.

Henry was in the midst of a very messy and very expensive divorce. Twelve years ago, when he and his young bride were happily married, they couldn't even think of a life without the other one in it, and so bought burial plots together at the Happy Rolling Acres cemetery. Now, after several affairs had come to light, all of them his, the last thing either one of them wanted to do was spend an eternity slowly decaying within a 10 mile radius of the other. To make matters worse, these plots were not side by side, but rather, in an effort by Happy Rolling Acres to be more eco-friendly, stacked vertically, so that even in death, someone had to be on the bottom, and someone got to be on top. It was the matter of who got to be on top that was the crux of the whole divorce. The cemetery had been firm that they would not accept refunds because no one wanted to be buried in the same vertical grave as a stranger. Also, neither Henry or his wife wanted to surrender their share of the twelve-foot pit that overlooked the city, and both were holding firm that since neither one of them could conceive of being buried anywhere else but that plot, they fought over who got the top spot.

Henry, who wanted to be buried in the same cemetery as his father, had tried to buy off his wife, increasing the settlement every time their lawyers met. But his wife had continued to hold firm, stating that she wanted to be buried in the same cemetery as her mother, and that fantastic plots like the ones they owed, with scenic views of the city, were one in a million. He would have to come up with at least that amount before she budged. While Henry was quite wealthy, he wasn't quite a millionaire, and so the battle continued.

Henry stepped outside of the cafe and headed towards work, his mind still focusing on the divorce and at what a bitch his wife was. It had rained during the night, and the sidewalk and streets were filled with shallow puddles of water, brightly reflecting the intense light of the morning sun. Man, thought Henry, feeling around in his pocket for his pair of sunglasses,it is really sunny out here. After unsuccessfully finding his glasses, Henry continued on his way to work, squinting through the intense glare.

Suddenly, a loud horn snapped him out of his intense concentration, and he realised, a moment too late, that his feet were on autopilot and that he had forgotten to stop at the crosswalk. The last thing he saw were the blinding lights of the semi-truck.

The driver of the semi, as he told police, who later told Henry's widow, had been temporary blinded by a large puddle in the road reflecting the bright Spring sunshine, and it was only at the last moment that he saw Henry and managed to sound out a warning horn. Henry's wife took the news solemnly and said that she would inform the lawyers.

A week later, at Henry's funeral, after all the guests had left, Henry's widow made her way to the grave. "Oh Henry," she said with a smile on her face as she took off her new Prada sunglasses, courtesy of Henry's insurance money, "Don't you know that women ALWAYS end up on top?"